


whisper Words to me

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, Psychological Torture, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Torture, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 23:13:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20629109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Tony has the unfortunate habit of getting kidnapped.Fortunately, he has a savior.5 Times Bucky saved Tony. And 1 Time Tony returned the favor.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for the Winteriron Reverse Bang, for the [@tonynatashas](tonynatashas.tumblr.com) GORGEOUS art. 

**HYDRA**

It is, by Tony’s count, the thirteenth time he’s been kidnapped. 

As kidnappings go--this one is not bad. The men in black military tac gear and no identifying marks already did better than Doom and his attempt last year--they got him from his brownstone in Cambridge, shoved a bag over his head quick enough that he couldn’t gather any information about them, stripped him of all his electronics and his fucking watch, and they stayed  _ quiet _ . There was no chatter while they transported him, no reporting back to their bosses, no congratulations shared--there was just a thick tense silence and the quiet whir of machinery that he couldn’t quite place. 

That was hours ago--at least long enough that Rhodey is probably losing his mind. 

Rhodey always worries though, says it’s not  _ normal _ for a body to be kidnapped so damn much and that one day, the damn kidnappers are going to take his head and not just his ransom insurance. 

Tony privately agrees, but being stolen from his grade school classrooms, from the park under Jarvis’ eye, from the beach house where Aunt Pegs took him one summer--that was by far the shortest kidnapping, thirty minutes done and dusted--has left him somewhat jaded about the whole thing. 

He went limp when they pulled him from the van, and he got a blinding cuff to the head for that, before he got his feet under him and played along. 

If they’re willing to hurt him, playing along is his best bet until he can figure out who the hell they are and what the fuck they want. 

~*~ 

The problem with being kidnapped is that it's  _ boring _ . There are moments of sheer terror, of course---moments when he thought he was going to die. But there is also the long hours of waiting. Waitin for his kidnappers to return, waiting for ransom demands to be sent and time to elapse and videos to be taken and money exchanges to occur, and it drove him absolutely batshit. 

Tony had never been good at being still and patient, and being still and patient while someone hovered over and debated killing him had lost its appeal before he hit double digits. 

It takes him almost an hour to pop the lock on his cuffs and he grins as they fall open and the pressure binding his legs loosens. Better. Much better. He's still bored, but at least he's got his hands. He spends the next hour carefully exploring the little cell and coming up with exactly nothing to give him an out. The room is all smooth walls and concrete floor, absolutely nothing he can use to get the hell out of here. 

Not that he's terribly worried about it--they'll drag him out when enough time has passed. 

He just has to keep himself from going crazy while he waits. 

He sighs and settles in a corner, and starts mentally going over the quinnjet he and Rhodey have been working on. If he's going to wait for them to come for him, he might as well be productive. 

~*~ 

One of the guards take him to the bathroom after about three hours, when he's finished his review of the quinnjet's engine and he's figured out how to make the engine give them more power. He's vaguely pleased with himself, can't wait to sit down and show Rhodey. 

The bathroom doesn't really qualify. It's in a dark room that's cold and Tony worries about what's crawling around in the hole the toilet perches over, but it's too dim to see, and he's pretty sure he doesn't  _ want _ to know. 

When he's finished, he glances around. Careful and curious. 

There's a vertical tube emitting a faint yellow glow and he stares at it for moment, flicks a glance back tow where his guard is waiting. Then huffs and scurries across the darkness to peer into the glowing tube. It's cold, so cold it makes his hand ache when he touches it, and--

Tony doesn't gasp. 

He doesn't react at all, too aware that throwing up or having hysterics is not a really brilliant idea right now. 

The man is beautiful. Long hair frozen in a halo around him, pale and solmen, and Tony wishes he could see his eyes. 

He is beautiful. "I didn't know we figured out cryo," he murmurs, touching the glass again. The cold is searing against his palm, but he doesn't pull away, not until his guard shouts and slams the door open and he slips away, into the shadows, away from the man frozen in a tube, to pop up at his guard with a wild grin. "Did you miss me?" he asks, teasing. 

It’s almost worth it, when the guard slams the butt of his gun into his temple. 

~*~ 

They drag him into a small cement room, and beat him. For the longest time, no one asks him anything, not until he feels like so much raw meat, not until it hurts to breath, to blink, when he's shivering and the darkness is so thick the single bulb hanging from the ceiling does nothing to chase the shadows from the corners of the room. 

Then--only when he is shaking and his spirits flag, only when he isn't sure he actually will survive that, do the questions begin. 

It's only one. 

The man who stands across from him is whip thin, with a narrow pointed face and cold empty eyes. 

"The override launch codes for the Stark missile cache." 

Tony blinks--and laughs. "Are you for fucking real?" 

A fist lands in his belly and he gasps, but he hears it when the demand comes again. 

"The override launch codes for the Stark missile cache." 

"My father doesn't even like me--he sure as fuck doesn't trust me with that kind of secret." 

A bucket of icy water lands in his face, and he gasps, the shivering kicking up. 

"The override launch codes for the Stark missile cache." 

"You keep asking--I can't give you something I don't have." 

The weasley man smiles at him, thin and unpleasant. "You will." 

"I  _ can't _ " 

"The water," he says, simply, and Tony feels his gut tighten in fear, and then they're dragging him into another room, and shoving his head into a sink of ice cold water, strong hands holding him down as he thrashes, as he inhales and chokes, and he opens his mouth to scream. 

The world spins and he can breath, breath for just a moment, and the questions comes. 

"I don't  _ know _ !" 

The water takes him again. 

~*~ 

He throws up until his stomach aches, and his throat is raw, his mouth coated with the cold and the bitter of bile, and he can't stop *shivering. It makes him want to scream, shakes the broken ribs every violent tremor that takes him, and he bites back the groan of agony. 

They'll know, now. His father and Peggy and the others--they'll know and be searching for him. 

He just has to hold on for a little bit longer. 

~*~ 

The weasley man is waiting when the guards in their black tac gear drag Tony into the room.

He is waiting, and Tony forces his face to remain blank. Because standing at his side is the man from the cryo tube. 

"The override launch codes for the Stark missile cache," Weasel asks, almost gently. 

Tony doesn't bother with a quip. He's too tired, too distracted by the beautiful silent man at his side. 

He stands there, shivering and heaving and Weasel smiles. "I will leave you to the Soldier then." 

The air in the room shifts, a tension that makes the air on his arm stand up and Weasel says, softly. "Do not kill him." 

" _ Da _ ," the man answers, blankly, and Weasel leaves. 

Leaves Tony and the Soldier alone in the dark. 

~*~ 

The thing about it is--he should be afraid. 

The soldier they leave him with is cold and blank and doesn't look at him, but he puts off an air of barely contained violence that makes Tony wary. 

But not afraid. 

He hangs from his wrists and chains and watches the soldier and thinks--if he kills me, I think it would be ok. 

"You're a pretty little murder doll," he says, and the soldier blinks, slow and calculated at him.

"I don't have the launch codes," he says, exhausted. "I don't have anything. I don't even work for SI--I'm in college, and my dad hates me. I can't give you anything." 

The man doesn't speak. 

He doesn't come any closer either. 

"Are you going to hurt me?"

The soldier stares at him, and then slowly shakes his head. 

Some of the tension eases out of him, and he licks his lips. "What are you going to do?" 

The soldier doesn't respond. Just stands there. Watching him. 

It's creepy. It  _ should _ be creepy. Except that it's not--it's almost comfortable, like his gaze, sweeping over Tony, lingering on his bound ribs and bruised face, and the chains on his wrists, and his expression tightens, fury filling them. 

He moves, suddenly, slips close and reaches up. Tony flinches, just a little, and the soldier pauses, meets his gaze--his eyes are bright in the darkness, a gleaming stormy blue and almost begging and Tony feels all the tension bleed out of him. 

"What are you doing?" he murmurs, and the soldier shakes his head, shrugs. 

And breaks the chains on his wrists, slowly lowering him to the ground, and holding Tony against the warm solid strength of his chest. 

~*~ 

He wakes to movement and noise, to strong arms tightening around him and he flails, briefly, before they tighten again, almost scolding, and he blinks up. 

Placid, storm grey eyes gaze down at him, and for a moment, that’s all he can focus on. 

Eyes the color of the endless sky before it rains, and long hair hanging down, a pale face and mouth twisting into something that is almost a smile. 

“You’re not a dream,” Tony murmurs and something flickers in those blank eyes, before the noise registers. 

Gunfire. 

Shouting. 

“Pegs,” he breathes, and the arms around him tighten again. Tony looks up at the soldier who should be hurting him, who holds him like he’s precious, and says, “Will you help me?” 

The soldier stares for a long moment, and then stands, and tugs Tony up. He gets a good grip on the handle of the door with his left hand, and  _ twists, pulls _ . 

It’s noisy, even under the gunfire, and Tony winces, clinging to the man’s broad back, before he shoves the door open and pulls Tony out of his cell and into a nightmare. 

It doesn’t make sense, really. The soldier is methodical and lighting fast, disarming and incapacitating three guards before they can react, shooting fourth who comes charging at them, and Tony blinks, a little startled, because when he asked for help--he didn’t expect  _ this _ . 

The soldier gets them down the corridor and nudges Tony toward the metal staircase, nodding at it as he turns toward the noise of footsteps behind them. 

“Tony!” a familiar voice shouts, and he takes a step toward it, toward Aunt Peggy and safety and--

Behind and below, he can hear gunfire, can hear the pained grunt from the soldier who protected him, and he pauses. For just a moment, he hesitates. Storm grey eyes find his, bright and furious and pleading, and then Peggy is there, and she’s shouting into her comms, pulling him away, and the last thing he sees is his soldier collapsing as someone slams into him with a stun baton. 

~*~ 

They don’t talk about it. 

Not while he’s being driven back to SHIELD, not while he’s in debrief, not when Peggy pulls rank and throws out all of the underlings and agents Fury throws at him. Not when she wraps him up in her title and privilege and drags him home. 

Not when Howard demands answers and Peggy argues with him. Not when he's shivering in his bed, swaying and exhausted and not when he collapses, exhausted and dehydrated and wrapped around three broken ribs.

He never does talk about it. But he thinks about it, a lot. About the shaggy hair and stormy eyes and plush lips and arms that held him safe, in the middle of hell. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Osborne**

He wakes up in a dark room and he wants to scream because this is the very last thing he wanted to spend his weekend doing.

Aunt Peggy is going to be  _ furious _ if he misses Sharon’s baptism.

He closes his eyes, tugs a little on the bonds—zip tied to the chair, his very least favorite way to be secured.

The problem isn’t that he’s been kidnapped or zip tied—again. It’s that he’s sitting on a cold metal chair in his boxers.

“Fuck,” he mumbles into the dark empty room.

~*~

Men in white lab suits—and that’s definitely new—set up a camera and tape him holding up today’s newspaper. They’re silent, throughout.

“Howard won’t pay a ransom,” he says, useless. “He hasn’t paid ransoms in years, your intel is out of date.”

They don’t respond and he bites his lip, angrily.

There’s no point in talking to them—they won’t respond. They don’t bother touching him, don’t  _ hurt _ him—they just film and ignore and walk out, leaving him with spots dancing behind his eyes and cold shivering across his bare skin, and darkness wrapped around him.

He closes his eyes and waits.

~*~

The door opens when he’s half asleep, too bored and cold to bother attempting to escape or figure out how to prevent this from happening again.

It will.

He’s Tony Stark. Of course it will.

“You hungry?”

The voice is coming from a man in another white lab suit, his face obscured, and Tony bares his teeth in something that will never be called a smile. “Jarvis told me never to take candy from strangers.”

It earns him a laugh, and the mask comes away.

Norman Osborne grins at him, all manic energy bright behind his muddy brown eyes and Tony’s stomach drops. “Norm, what the  _ fuck.” _

“Not a stranger, Tones. So—you hungry?”

~*~

He doesn’t eat. Norman does, sits across from him in his lab getup and his big eerie grin and for the first time, he’s actually worried.

He met Norman his first week at MIT, fended him off unsuccessfully before Rhodey swooped in and pulled him away, protective and possessive both and Tony latched onto the older man like a limpet and Rhodey never sent him away.

It didn’t make Norm go away, though. Not completely. He was there, in Tony’s labs and in the library and at parties, always watching, something hot and wanting in his eyes.

Norm never did hear no for what it was, when Tony said it. Then Norman graduated and left and Tony thought it was over.

“You got quite the little…production…here.”

“Oscorp? Gonna give SI a run for its money.”

Tony smiles, all false interest. He doesn’t give a fuck about a tiny tech startup with delusions of grandeur. “Why me?” he asks, point blank and blunt. It earns a laugh from Norm, slimy and rubbing wrong against his skin.

“Wanted you to see what we’re doing. SI and Oscorp could be a powerhouse,” Norm says, expansive, and Tony snorts.

He can’t help it. “You think kidnapping me is the way to get my attention?”

“I think I have it. Maybe for the first time since that protective bastard pulled you away in Sigma Pi, I have all of your attention.”

~*~

It’s the strangest kidnapping he’s ever been through. And that counts the one with Victor and the European vacation he didn’t  _ strictly  _ want to take.

Norman dresses him in faded jeans and a black shirt with the Oscorp logo smeared across the front and takes him to the labs, his eyes bright and proud. “It’s all yours,” he says, smug.

“Uh—”

“You can create anything here,” Norm says, “ _ we  _ can.”

Tony blinks at him. “Norm—”

“You need to give us a shot, Tony,” Norman says, and his tone dips, goes sharp and severe, the way that makes fear shiver down his spine.

“Norman,” Tony says, gently. “This isn’t going to happen.”

The smile vanishes, and the hand on his elbow goes tight and painful. “Very well.”

~*~

The blank faced white lab suits are back, shoving him into the dark room. He’s stripped back down to his boxers, pushed unceremoniously into the cold room, and left there.

The fear is back.

Because this isn’t a ransom demand, this isn’t a demand for tech or weapons.

Every time he’s been kidnapped, he’s been a pawn—but this is Norm taking the queen.

He’s the endgame. 

He sits in the dark cell and shivers and says, soft and emphatic, “Fuck.”

~*~

It goes like this for longer than Tony can keep track of. Dragged out by lab coats and dressed in distressed jeans and Oscorp shirts, sat across from Norm over a meal that he doesn’t touch, led to a lab he hates—and shoved back into a dark room when Tony turns him down.

It’d be one thing if Norm wanted him to work alone—he could do that, could be out of here in less than a day with the lab Norm created for him. But he wants  _ Tony.  _ And Tony—

He  _ can’t _ .

On the thirteenth day, when he’s trembling with hunger and thirst and considering eating the soft bread on the table, glistening with butter, so fragrant his mouth waters, Norm says, “Why did you say no to me, all those years ago?”

Tony blinks at him, his mind moving slow enough that he doesn’t respond before Norm rambles on, “You never were one to wait for your Words. So why? What was so awful about me that you wouldn’t even entertain it?”

He considers lying, for all of a second, before he says, “You creeped me out, Norm. I mean—not to put too fine a point on it, you  _ kidnapped  _ me.”

Norm’s face does something unpleasantly furious before it smoothes into bland smiles. “You  _ never _ gave me a chance. Not even when we were in school, not even before this. All you saw were the little sorority sluts and Rhodes.”

Tony snorts. “It was never like that with me and Rhodey, my god, Norm.”

“It doesn’t matter—you refused to give me a chance. This is me demanding one.”

“You’re actually insane,” Tony breathes, and that same unpleasant anger flares.

This time it stays, and Tony sees it coming, when Norman finally reaches his breaking point, when he backhands Tony and black dots dance across his vision.

~*~

He’s shoved into the dark cell a little bit rougher this time. His face is throbbing and there’s a sharp pain in his side when he breathes that makes him wonder about cracked ribs but he doesn’t crumple until the door shuts behind him, and darkness closes around him, and then—then he does.

~*~

The door swings open when he’s sleeping and it takes a long moment for him to turn, to blink at the doorway and the black clad figure backlit by the light.

He frowns.

There’s—

“You,” he whispers.

The shaggy hair and storm grey eyes are familiar and a faded memory, both. He stares, not sure what he’s looking at and the face contorts, just a little, as hands reach for him.

Real then. Not a hallucination summoned by pain and dehydration. Big warm hand, cold metal chill, and strong arms lifting—real.

“What are you doing?” he mumbles.

The Soldier pauses. Looks at him and Tony  _ knows _ that look. It’s familiar even if nothing about him is—all exasperated and annoyed, and it makes an irrational giggle boil in his throat, because Tony has always been able to drag that response out of people with very little effort.

“You aren’t here for me, are you?”

The Soldier shakes his head, slow, and swings him up, into his arms.

Tony clings, because he doesn’t know why this man is here, and he doesn’t particularly  _ care. _

After the kidnapping and the strange rescue and the silent Soldier who was kinder than he had any right to expect or deserve. He remembers the way he looked, the way he protected Tony and killed for him, the way he’d looked, swarmed by the black clad tac suits, bloody and fighting them while Peg pulled him away.

He remembers the way, after, no one—not Fury, not SHIELD, not Peggy—had ever mentioned him.

“They said I made you up,” Tony says, and gray eyes tip down, considering. “Did you know I was here?”

A short shake of the head, and something like frustration in his eyes.

“Quiet aren’t you?”

That bothers Tony, but he doesn’t know  _ why _ .

First Words never bothered him before.

He stopped listening for the ones on his hip when he was six.

The Soldier pushes open a door and a green glow lights their faces. He makes a pleased noise in his throat, and shifts, cradling Tony in one arm while he inserts a thumbdrive into the nearest computer. A few keystrokes and Tony whistles. “They have you doing corporate espionage now?”

The Soldier grunts, pulls a handful of vials into a pouch on his hip. Adds the flashdrive, and then drops a—“Is that a  _ grenade?” _ Tony demands, shrill.

That earns him a smile, wide and young and wicked and it’s enough that Tony’s mouth actually goes dry.

They’re in a room and the Soldier’s body—big broad protective—is braced around his when the explosion wracks the building. Tony can hear shouting and screaming, and he grins, viciously pleased. His Soldier smiles with him, a violent rictus.

“Got a plan to get us out?” Tony asks, and the Soldier gives him a look so offended and indignant that Tony presses his giggle into his chest.

He shrieks, a minute later when the arms around him tighten, steel bands, and one hand cradles the back of his head as the Soldier throws them out the window.

He screams and the Soldier laughs, a rough soundless shaking that makes his scream almost morph into a laugh.

They fall and he grunts when they land, but those strong arms and hands hold him safe and for the first time since he woke up in the dark room to Norman’s smile—he feels safe.

~*~

He wants to ask about the little vials and the thumbdrive but he doesn’t. He curls up on the couch the Soldier deposits him on, tugs the blanket up. It’s an empty flop, and it raises as many questions as the Soldier’s appearance does. Tony bites them back, and takes the phone when it’s handed to him.

He calls Rhodey.

Of course he does.

He knows Peg will come with a SHIELD strike team and the whole military might, and Howard wouldn’t bother to come at all, and Rhodey—

Rhodey curses for five minutes and promises to be there in thirty, and hangs up and Tony drops the phone and says, “He’s coming.”

The Soldier nods, and slides down to sit, facing the door, near Tony’s head, and he leans his forehead against his shoulder and closes his eyes and they wait.

~*~

He wakes up to an empty room and Rhodey’s voice, shouting his name, and a thumbdrive tucked into his hand the only thing that convinces him that he didn’t make it all up.

He clings to it and Rhodey and the sensation of arms, bands of steel, wrapped around him and keeping him safe.


	3. Chapter 3

**Ten Rings **

He thinks about it, a lot, after. 

The pale eyes and the strong arms and the quirk of a mouth that he wants to taste. 

He touches the Words, on his hip and wonders what the Soldier would say to him, if he spoke. If it would be a match. 

He wonders if his own Words--he can't remember them now--are written on his mysterious savior's skin. 

And when it becomes too much--

Tony steps up his security measures, takes Pepper and his bots and sets up shop in California and tries not to dream of pale eyes or dark rooms or a manic smile on the face of a madman. 

Sometimes--sometimes, he almost forgets. 

~*~ 

He wakes up twice, after the explosion, while they cut into him, and he screams and screams, black rushing up to snatch him back into oblivion, and a shadow looms over him and for a moment, blinking at it and the dim light, he thinks--maybe. 

He  _ hopes _ . 

"Soldier?" he asks, mumbles delirious and then he's sliding under the delicious waves of nothingness again. 

~*~ 

Tony wakes to a magnet in his chest and a battery for a handbag and a nightmare chasing him from the land of dreams right into a hellscape. 

"They are called the Ten Rings," the tall thin man says, and Tony eyes him, distrustful. 

His eyes are distant and his words brisk, but there is kindness in his hands when he helps Tony move, and a jacket that smells faintly of him wrapped around his shoulders. 

"What do they want?" he asks, and the man smiles. 

"You, little prince." 

~*~ 

The Ten Rings are not like Norman. They're brutal, and demanding and his heart pounds, aches behind the damn magnet in his chest. 

"You'll make this easier if you obey," they say. 

"You will go home," they promise. 

"They're lying," he says. 

"Yes," agrees Yinsin. 

~*~ 

He dreams, sometimes. 

He dreams of hands holding him down, and water filling him up, and the nausea inducing tug of the car battery at his side. 

He dreams of Yinsin dying, eye burnt out and bleeding on Tony's feet and glaring, wordless, at him. 

He dreams of Rhodey dead and forgotten on an empty desert floor. 

He dreams of pale storm eyes and strong sheltering arms and a voice he wants to hear. 

He dreams of going home. 

But he wakes, and they're dreams, except the nightmares that are real, and he is here, and alone and no one is going to rescue him but himself.

~*~ 

"That isn't a Jericho missile," Yinsin says, soft and awed and pale in the glow of the arc reactor. 

"Neither is that," he says, later, and Tony smiles. Taps the plans twice. Yinsin looks at him, eyes bright with questions. 

"That," he says softly, "is how we go home." 

~*~ 

The door opens in the middle of the night, and Yinsin scrambles to his feet, eyes wide and mouth already open, and a body lands in their little hovel with a metallic clatter, before the door clangs shut behind them. 

It feels like a dream. 

Like this is a dream he's had a thousand times in this god forsaken hell hole. 

He sits up, says, "Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?" 

_ "You have fucked up dreams."  _

Tony gasps, his hip burning and pale pale eyes flick up to find him, lips he wants to taste curving into a familiar, achingly beautiful smile. 

"Oh, fuck," he whispers. 

~*~

The Soldier is bleeding, bruises all over his face, breathing heavily and shaking where he’s sprawled on the floor. “You’re here,” Tony breaths. 

He doesn't believe it. Except there is a sharp burning warmth on his ribs, and cool metal under his hands and Yinsin is hissing under his breath next to him. 

It's more than any dream or nightmare he's had. 

His fingers shake and he clenches them into a fist and says, " _ Why _ are you here?" 

Confusion flickers across his face, pale and beautiful under the blood and bruises and his voice is small. Small and blank and afraid. "I don't know." 

~*~ 

They ask him questions. Yinsin cycles through every language he knows and the Soldier answers, patient and obedient, every single time. 

"His accent is incredible," Yinsin murmurs. Tony shifts, a little, and the arm that's been wound around him clamps tight, holds him still against the Soldier's side. 

Tony relaxes back into him. "But nothing as for memories?" 

A look of regret and he shakes his head. 

"Nothing he's willing to share." 

"I don't  _ know _ ," the Soldier corrects, a hint of petulance in his tone and Tony smoothers his laughter at his side. 

"Were you sent?" Tony asks, tilting his head up. They're close, close enough the Soldier's pretty eyes go a little crossed when he looks down. "Your--the people you work for." 

"Don't work for 'em," he mutters and it sounds, almost, like that first announcement, thick Brooklyn and lazy. 

"Who are they?" 

Fear flickers in his eyes, and his lips tighten. "The Asset cannot speak of the Handlers. Disobedience is punishment. The Asset will be discarded." 

His hands, flesh and metal both, tremble, and his voice is tiny again. "Please don't--please don't discard me. I'll be good. I'll be good." 

Tony doesn't know what his face is doing, but he can see the horror in Yinsin's eyes, and he can feel the tears in his, when he pulls the Soldier close, and he collapses, two hundred plus pounds of shaking Soldier and clinging arms. 

He pets dirty hair and murmurs. "Shhh. Shh. You're ok, sweetheart. You're ok. I won't let them hurt you." 

He doesn't believe that. 

He wishes he did. 

But the man in his arms goes limp and exhausted in his lap. 

He believes Tony. Maybe that is enough. 

~*~ 

He leaves the Soldier sleeping on his cot, and stands over a forge and Yinsin watches him. "You know him." 

Tony thinks, of that base with a frozen man and the help he gave. Of Norman's tower and the terror he'd felt and how it melted away, when the Soldier stepped into his dark cell, carried him into the light. 

"He saved me." 

Yinsin looks at him, where he's sleeping, hands clutched tight in the pillow, face soft in slumber, and says, "Do you think he will again?" 

Tony points at the plans. "This is our plan. What the Soldier can do--we'll use it. But this is our plan." He smiles, and doesn't say that he wants to protect the Soldier. 

He thinks Yinsin probably knows. 

~*~ 

The Soldier watches him. Yinsin is sleeping, and beyond their little cave, the camp is quiet, the only noise the sound of Tony working. 

“What is it?” 

Tony flicks a look at him, and the Soldier makes a vague motion, nodding at his chest. Tony touches it. “Electromagnet. It’s an upgrade to the one Yinsin gave me. Keeps the shrapnel from reaching my heart.” 

He makes a noise, tiny and distressed and Tony lowers the soder and comes to crouch in front of the Soldier. “It hurts you,” he says, softly. 

Tony catches his hand as he reaches for the arc reactor and cradles it. “It’s not a bad hurt.” He takes a deep breath, “Does this hurt you?” he asks, gently, squeezing the metal hand in his own. 

The Soldier tilts his head, and a small smile tugs at his lips. “Not a bad hurt.” 

~*~ 

“He is very damaged, Tony,” Yinsin says, softly. “He isn’t stable.” 

Tony looks at the Soldier, where he’s standing at parade rest, waiting for Tony’s attention or orders or the end of the world. 

“I know,” he confesses. “The people he works for--I don’t think it’s voluntary. He--they’re not good to him.” 

Yinsin is quiet, still, watching. “But he’s yours. Isn’t he?” 

Tony doesn’t flinch. Not quite. But he goes still, and his fingers drift down to his hip, where the Words are scrawled, messy and beautiful and bewildering. 

_ You have fucked up dreams.  _

He wishes, again, that he could remember his first Words to the Soldier. But either way. “Yes,” he breathes. Yinsin smiles. “Then you cannot die here. Neither of you can.” 

Tony nods. “We need to go home.” 

~*~

It goes wrong. 

They aren't ready, the  _ suit  _ isn't ready. The Soldier is anxious, pacing the little cave and searching for anything that could help them escape and ignoring Tony completely and he can hear the guards beyond this little room. 

Yinsin is scrambling to help him into the armor, and his hands shake and there's something in his eyes that Tony doesn't trust, doesn't like. "There isn't enough time," he breathes, reading the computer. 

He looks, for the first time since Tony met him, relieved. Happy. "There isn't enough time."

"Yinsin," Tony says, sharp and pleading and he smiles. 

"Take care of him. Let him take care of you." 

Then he snatches up a gun from the guards killed by their bombs and he runs out. 

The Soldier watches, bright eyed and worried and Tony screams after him, listening to the sound of gunfire and shouting. 

"We have to--Yinsin," he mumbles. The suit shudders and he looks at the Soldier, watching him, tense and ready to bolt. "Ready to get the hell outta here?" he asks. 

The soldier grins, as vicious and bloodthirsty as Tony has ever seen him. "Stay behind me," he orders, and he's a little surprised that he's obeyed. 

They destroy the camp. The weapons, the men who played with his life, who  _ hurt _ them. They destroy it all. 

It's not enough. 

Yinsin dies, there, blood on his lips, eyes bright and already searching beyond what Tony can see. The soldier waits, at his shoulder, patient through the chaos. 

"Let's go," he says, finally, and leaves the man who saved his life behind, bullet-ridden and bloody. 

~*~ 

He doesn't cry. Not until they're miles away, and the scent of smoke and fire is covered by the scent of sand and blood. 

Not until they crash into the sand, the Soldier rolling to cradle him as they hit the desert floor, arms tight and protective around him. 

Not until the suit lies in piece and his arc reactor gleams in the darkness and the Soldier watches him. 

Then. 

Then he cries. 

For the first time in three months, he sobs. 

For himself, and the pain that is now a constant companion. 

For Rhodey who could be dead. 

For his soulmate who watches him, curious and confused and afraid. 

For Yinsin, who died so that he could live, who lied for all those months, who lived with so much grief and never trusted Tony with it. 

He sobs, and he sobs, and the Soldier shifts, wraps around him, careful and sweet and his voice is soft, a low lullaby, until Tony finally sleeps. 

~*~ 

He wakes in his soulmate’s arms and he doesn’t know what to do with that. 

He managed to tuck it down far enough during their captivity that it almost sends him into a panic, thinking about it now. The arms around him tighten, and the Soldier says, "Stop thinkin' so hard." 

He snorts and shifts, shoving a little until he relents and let's Tony out of his embrace. He scoots away enough that he can think, and then he looks at the Soldier. Bites his lip and says, "Do you--did you know? Who I am?" 

"Stark. Anthony Edward. Heir to Stark Industries. CEO and head of R&D. Graduated from MIT--" 

"Stop," Tony snaps, cutting the recital off with a wave of his hand and the soldier lapses into silence, waiting. 

"Why did you come for me?" 

Something very puzzled crosses his face, confusion and fear and he says, softly, "I don't know. I--I shouldn't have. I will be punished." 

"Punished?" Tony says, sharply and the Soldier shudders. Nods, a choppy motion, and Tony huffs. 

"No one is going to punish you. But--you came for me." Tony waits until storm cloud eyes find his and he repeats it. "You were there for me." 

He nods, a reluctant confession. 

"Do you know why?" 

The Soldier's fingers ghost over his skin, and then half reach for Tony before they curl, convulsive, into a fist. 

"Your Words--" 

"Yeah," Tony breaths. "That's right. I've got your Words too." 

The soldier's eyes are wide and shocked and hopeful. 

"It means I'm your soulmate," Tony says, softly and the Soldier makes a hurt pleased noise and reaches for Tony. 

~*~ 

They curl in the dark, wrapped together, the Soldier's metal hand wrapped around Tony's ribs where his words scrawl, messy and beautiful. 

"You're going to leave," Tony says, when the sky begins to lighten and the Soldier dips down, presses chapped lips to his head. "You don't have to." 

"If I stay, they'll come," he says. "They'll take me and they'll kill you." 

He says it blankly, like it's a fact, like it's not the line out of a nightmare. Tony peers up at him, and the Soldier's face is tipped up at the sky, his expressions soft as the sun rises. "I won't let them hurt you,  _ котенок. _ " 

"What about you?" he asks. The soldier blinks at him, and Tony feels tears gathering in his eyes. "They'll hurt  _ you _ ." 

The Soldier considers that, and then nods. His mouth is a thin line. "Yes. But you will be safe." 

"But--" 

He shifts, tugs Tony up and breathes against his lips, "You will be  _ safe _ ." 

He says it like if that's true, he can handle anything. 

Tony hates it. 

He hates all of this. 

"I want you to stay," he almost begs. 

A smile flickers on his lips and he says  _ "Один день, котенок." _

He kisses Tony, then, soft and sweet, and it's chapped and sandy, and a little clumsy and it's the best damn kiss Tony's ever had. 

~*~ 

He wakes and he’s alone. 

He’s alone when a helicopter wings overhead and Rhode comes running for him, relief etched on his beautiful face, and so alive it makes Tony sob. 

He’s alone, and he let’s Rhodey take care of him, take him home and the whole time, he thinks,  _ I’m going to save you.  _

_ I’m going to save you.  _


	4. Chapter 4

**The Mandarin **

People don't kidnap Ironman. 

There is a part of him that wishes they did. Soldier won't come for him if he isn't in danger. If he doesn't  _ need _ to be rescued. 

Tony builds suits and he destroys his weapons in the wrong hands. 

There is a moment--a month long terror struck moment--when he thinks he's going to die, and he wonders who will take care of his Soldier. 

He never told, not Rhodey or Pep or anyone else, that he found his soulmate. 

He doesn't want to share that, not yet. 

And he doesn't know how to reconcile the fact that he is a fucking  _ superhero _ and can't save the man who is destined to be his other half. 

He doesn't even know the man's name. 

So he builds suits and he throws himself head long into danger and he creates a new element and he saves the world by sending a nuke into space. 

Steve gets himself into some trouble in DC and he watches. 

He watches. Because that soldier--black tac gear, liquid danger, dark hair and stormy eyes--he shivers. 

"What are they doing to you?" he mumbles. 

~*~ 

Steve fidgets across from him and Tony struggles to keep his expression blank. It  _ hurts _ . 

This all--it hurts. 

"Can you help?" Steve asks, and there's something fragile and hopeful and hesitant in his voice. 

"Of course," Tony says. Absent, but not. "Facial recognition--J will keep an eye on the security cameras."

"In DC?" Steve asks, and Tony blinks at him. 

He honestly thinks the Soldier-- _ James _ \--is still in DC. He has no idea. He's read the file--he  _ fought _ the Soldier. And he has no fucking clue. 

Tony shakes his head, shakes the thought. "No. In the world." 

~*~ 

He's as good as his word, gets the algorithm running and has JARVIS start combing through the data Natasha dumped like spilt oil onto the internet. Then, with his hands shaking and his tech doing everything he could to find his soulmate, he reached for a bottle of Scotch and his phone. 

"Rhodey," he says, and his voice is shaking, a secret three years heavy on his tongue, "Rhodey, I need you." 

~*~ 

"Your soulmate. Is Captain America's long lost mostly dead bestie." Rhodey says, flatly. He isn't eating his Chinese anymore--hasn't since about thirty seconds into Tony telling him about the Soldier. "And he's been rescuing you from your kidnappers for most of your life. Is that what you're saying?" 

Tony makes a face, but nods. Weakly. There's so much judgement and disbelief in Rhodey's eyes he almost wants to hide.

"Can you do  _ anything _ the easy way?" Rhodey groans. "Just--one goddamn thing, Tones, I'm beggin' you."

"Sorry, honeybear," Tony says, and it's weak, apologetic and Rhodey reaches for his hand, squeezes it. 

"No you aren't, you ass. And you wouldn't be you if you did anything easy, would you." 

"You're not mad I didn't tell you?" 

"I had other things to be angry about you tellin' me when you got back from Afghanistan," he says, waving his chopsticks and grinning. "Tell me about him."

He smiles, and does.

~*~

The Mandarian shakes the ground under his feet. 

The world is being threatened by aliens and an army he can't get the team to take seriously and as if that wasn't enough, there is a mad man blowing up his best friend and his home. 

As he hits the Pacific, his house tumbling down around him, he wonders if this is what will draw James out of hiding. 

~*~ 

"Don't you want to tell someone you're alive?" Harley asks, while he tries to put together a plan, tries to figure out what the hell he's supposed to do next. 

He does. 

He just doesn't know how to tell him. There isn't a lot of ways to reach out to James. For the first time since DC, he wants to tell Steve, if for no other reason than if he dies, he wants James to know he cared. 

"It's safer like this," he says and Harley watches him, skeptical, until he leaves and heads to Miami, because that's the most logical place for an international terrorist to hole up. 

It all goes perfect--even without his suit, it all goes perfect and he thinks maybe he can have this wrapped up, done and dusted, before Christmas. 

It all goes perfect until it doesn't. 

~*~ 

He wakes up zip tied to a metal bedframe, panic clawing at his gut. 

And calm, too. He twists his wrist, tests the limits of his bonds, and smiles, relaxing back into them. 

It doesn't make sense, the calm. But he knows his suit is coming, and he knows that James is. 

James broke through Hydra conditioning to find him in a desert cave in Afghanistan, and even then, it felt surreal and impossible, and now that Tony knows exactly what that conditioning entailed--it  _ is _ impossible. 

He knows it is. 

But he also knows that James will always come for him. 

~*~ 

He's alone. He's been hanging from the bedframe for almost twelve hours, and he's alone and has to piss and his wrists ache, and a window opens, and James slithers into the room. 

He crosses to stand in front of Tony with a few short steps, and he huffs. "Can you ever stay out of trouble?" 

"Last I saw, you were shooting up a bridge in DC, so maybe we shouldn't point fingers about that," Tony sasses, grinning at his soulmate. 

It's been three years--far too fucking long. 

"You knew it was me," James says, raising an eyebrow. Tony gives him a withering look, and James grins. 

"Steve is gonna shit kittens when he finds out--" Tony chokes off the words, not sure if he should say them. 

If they're true. 

If James really is his. 

James sighs and leans up into his space, hands coming up to catch Tony's, and he says, "Idiot. I came for you. Don't you know what that means?" 

"Tell me," Tony whispers and James's smile is soft, sweet, a promise he wants to chase. 

"You're mine, sweetheart." 

He rips the zipties and catches Tony as he stumbles, and holds him close. "What does that even  _ mean _ ?" Tony demands, because it's been over a decade now, of this, and he's terrified James will vanish again. 

"How bout we get out of the terrorist base and figure that out?" James suggests, and Tony nods. That sounds reasonable. 

~*~ 

After--after they rescue Pepper and Pepper rescues him, after the President is safe and the fires are put out and the suits fly home--he looks at James. He's still there, standing not quite in Tony's space, a gun resting casually across his body. There's something different about him--something warmer and loser and it looks  _ gorgeous _ .

"Where did you go, after DC?" he asks and James shrugs. 

"A little bit of everywhere? Back to Brooklyn. I needed--you saw, what Widow dumped on the internet." 

He nods. No pointing in lying. "You're mine," Tony says, because he still isn't sure what that will mean for them, but it's true and he won't shy away from it. "And I wanted every bit of information I could get." 

James smiles, but his eyes are shadowed. "You saw what they did. To me. I needed--I wanted you. But I needed to figure out who I was again. Not just who I had been, but who I was without Hydra pulling my strings or Steve as my best friend."

"He still is," Tony says, knee jerk. Because maybe James is  _ his _ , but he was Steve's first, always. 

"Maybe," James says, and shrugs. There's something in his eyes, something bright and full and hurt. "But I still needed to know who I am without him."

Tony doesn't say anything, just reaches out and takes his hand. 

It's enough. For now, it's enough. 

~*~ 

Rhodey takes one look at James, after everything, and his face crunches into an impressive scowl. Impressive enough that James hesitates and Tony huffs, all annoyed and amused. "Be nice, honeybear."

"You hurt him," Rhodey says, ignoring Tony completely. There's a snarl in his voice that reminds Tony of college, of MIT and boys older than him and a protective streak a mile wide. "You  _ left _ him." 

"I knew he was safe," James says, softly. "You were with him."

That draws Rhodey up short and James's head tilts, considering. "You found him, after Osborne. And after the Ten Rings." He glances at Tony, eyes wide and a touch wild, and Tony nods. 

"You keep him safe," James says and Rhodey straightens. 

"I try. He's an asshole who fakes his own death often enough to give me a heart attack, but I try."

James steps past Tony, into range of Rhodey's fists, and says, quiet and earnestly sincere, as good as Rogers on his best day, "Thank you." 

Rhodey glares. And huffs. "Dammit, it'd be easier if I could stay mad at you," he grumbles, and Tony grins. 

~*~

Barton brings a quinjet down to take them home, and Tony looks at James, waiting patient at his side. They haven't talked, really--not about what comes next. 

"Will you stay?" he asks, because he can't stop himself.

James blinks, looks down at Tony and a tiny frown furrows between his eyebrows. Tony licks his lips and plunges on, "I just--you don't have to. If you still need to," he waves a hand, "find yourself, that's--it's fine. I'll be ok. But--you could. Stay. With me." 

James huffs and says, "You get into trouble on your own." 

"That's hardly fair," Tony objects and Rhodey snorts his opinion. 

James grins and catches Tony's hand, squeezes his fingers. "Of course I'm staying." 

For the first time since his house came tumbling down around him, he feels like he can breath. He squeezes James's hand and drags him onto the quinjet and hears Clint saying, soft and awed, "Holy  _ shit _ ." 

James presses his grin into Tony's shoulder and Tony--Tony ignores the panicked disbelief from Clint and leans back into his soulmate's arms. 

~*~ 

James is quiet, as silent as the Soldier, on the flight home. Tony is torn between clinging to his side, revelling in the fact that he's  _ here _ , and Pepper. She huddles against Rhodey and watches James while Tony examines her and says, "You could have told me." 

It's not quite an accusation, but there's a hint of hurt that he hates in her voice and he squeezes her knee, feeling it warm under his palm. "I didn't tell anyone. Even Rhodey just found out. I--it was mine. He was mine. I wasn't ready to share that yet." 

She nods, and Rhodey catches his eye. "Are you ready now?"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't have an answer. He finds himself next to James again, leaning against his solid warmth and James says, "What's wrong?" 

"The Tower--you know Steve will be there." 

"Figured, what with you invitin' the team to live with you after the Battle of New York." 

"Are you ok with that? With him?" 

James exhales, and Tony shivers against him. "I can't hide from him and my life forever. Not if I want you. It's time he knows." 

"Do you?" Tony asks, his voice small. James looks down, and doesn't pretend for a second he doesn't understand the question. 

"I broke my conditioning to find you in that desert," he says, voice low and serious. "I did it to help you in Osborne's hellhole. I'll  _ always _ find you. Of course I want you,  _ котенок. _ " 

Tony blinks back tears, and James smiles, soft and sweet and he looks different, from the man in ice Tony saw all those years ago, and from the Soldier he found in his cell, and who found him over and over and over. 

He looks different, and he looks the same, and he's  _ Tony's _ , just Tony's. His hands are tight, bruisingly tight on James' shoulders and James' expression goes soft, almost gentle, and he smiles a little, before pulling Tony closer and brushing a kiss against his lips. 

It's soft, a butterfly light touch that's there and gone in seconds and Tony gasps, arching up for more and the second kiss--the second kiss is hot and heavy and dirty wet good, and Tony whines into it, whines around the tongue in his mouth and leans into the arms around his back and the world is spinning, the way it does when he flies, but he's grounded, tethered, held still and in place and perfect in James's arms. 

~*~ 

They're sitting in the communal living room, Tony's legs tossed over James', fingers tangled together. James is laughing at a story Rhodey is telling about spring break in '89, and Tony is grinning, leaning against him and keeping one eye on Pepper where she's curled under a blanket, asleep. 

The elevator door opens and James tenses, just a little and Tony's fingers tighten around his and Steve skids around the corner, eyes wide and shocked and hopeful. 

A pretty black man trails him, expression crunched into something long-suffering as Steve stills and stares and says, voice soft and shaking, "Bucky?" 

James is still and tense but his voice is gentle, soothing and warm when he says, "Hey, Stevie."


	5. Chapter 5

**HYDRA **

It's different, having James with him. 

Not easy, exactly--there's seventy years of history with HYDRA to work through, a mountain of guilt from Steve, and the inevitable jealousy that crops up from all sides. 

There's nightmares and miscommunications and Tony's inability to stop working long enough to sleep. 

But for all the challenges that come with him--there is no denying that it's good. 

James goes to therapy. Sam--Steve's soulmate, and wasn't  _ that _ a surprise no one was expecting dropped into team dinner a few nights after Tony and James arrived at the Tower--gets him into a few programs at the VA while Steve turns his considerable weight to getting James' back pay reinstated and his record cleared. Pepper helps, and doesn't even lecture Tony too much about the secret soulmate thing. 

There are some days when he wakes up and James is curled in a corner of the room, eyes on the door, knife in hand, blank faced and protective. But those days never scared Tony--he'd spent too many years being rescued by him to be afraid of the Soldier 

It was an adjustment--both for Tony and for the team. But sometimes--sometimes he woke up cradled by a warm body and metal arm, and a husky Russian voice in his ear and he leaned back for a kiss. Sometimes he blinked at a plate of meat and crackers and cheese, nuts and berries and coffee, and James throwing a ball for the bots to chase. Sometimes he stumbled into the living room and found James sprawled on the couch with a book while Steve sketched and Sam napped at his feet, and he thought--it was an adjustment--but it was worth all of the growing pains, to get them here. 

~*~ 

They don't tell the world. 

At first because James is new and unique and  _ his _ , and he didn't want to share. Because James was dealing with enough, reclaiming himself from HYDRA without adding the media circus that came with being with Tony Stark. 

And then because it was accepted, James was there, a presence in the Tower, a fighter when missions called them out of the tower, and no one really felt the need to explain that he was Tony's soulmate. 

It had never seemed like a pressing need. 

Very few were stupid enough to challenge Ironman and fewer still were willing to cross the Avengers. 

Advertising that Tony was also the Winter Soldier's soulmate just felt like overkill. 

~*~ 

"Ironman, you're getting too far afield," Cap shouted over the comms, and Tony rolled his eyes. He could still see the glint of James' arm where he was perched on a tree, picking off HYDRA agents as Nat and Steve stormed the base. 

"Something pinged JARVIS' radar," he says, "I'm checking it out." 

It's not that he doesn't take HYDRA seriously. It's maybe the opposite. It's been almost two years since the fall of SHIELD, since Steve broke HYRDRA to pieces, and they've spent most of those two years sweeping up the rubble, chasing the many heads and cells down. THis--this was supposed to be a routine mission--clear the base, free whatever human experiments they had going because gods know HYDRA adored their human experimentation, and get home in time for takeout. 

The energy signature three miles north of the base, in the middle of snow and trees and nothing--that's not routine. 

"JARVIS, show me what we're looking at," he says, ignoring Steve and James shouting at him, and the HUD fills with the small building bristling with energy that made no sense. The schematics popped up and then a high pitched whine filled the air and his ears and everything went black. 

~*~ 

When he wakes up, he registers three things almost simultaneously. 

He  _ hurts _ . 

He is still in the suit. 

James is going to be  _ pissed _ . 

He doesn't say anything because the suit is dead--the bastards must have used an EMP, and he hopes that it didn't bring Sam down too. 

Since he can't see anyone else in the room with him, he's going to assume he's alone in the clutches of HYDRA. 

He catalogs his injuries next--bruises up and down his torso, a pounding headache and dizziness that speaks of a concussion, and his lip is bleeding--probably bit it when he fell. The suit is built to take a fall, cushion his fragile squishy self when he did--so he'll walk this off, just the way he's supposed to. 

Doesn't mean he won't be sore as fuck, when he does. No one takes a spill from five hundred feet in the air without some pain, not even Capsicle. 

And that isn't even taking into consideration whatever his hosts are going to do to him. 

He won't be here long. Not when the whole team knew where he was going. Not when James is in the field. 

It's been almost two years since he came in from the cold to pull Tony's ass outta the Extremis fire, and in that time, Tony had managed to avoid being kidnapped again--but he knows his soulmate, knows that as better and well adjusted as James is these days, there is nothing that will push him into Winter Soldier mode quite as fast as someone hurting Tony. 

That HYDRA is the one who has him now will only make it worse. 

He  _ almost _ feels bad for the bastards. 

JARVIS and the suit is suspiciously, worryingly silent and he shoves that misplaced pity aside. 

"You fucked up," he mutters and in the shadows near the door, a body stirs. He's got a gun in his hands and Tony focuses on him. "HYDRA, right? You guys didn't get the memo, did you? We cut the goddamn head off." 

"Cut off one head--" 

"I know your idiotic slogan," Tony snaps, "and we're not just cutting off the heads, you idiot. We're cauterizing the wound, salting the damn ashes--nothing is growing back. We cut out the heart when Cap burned SHIELD, and we've spent two years killing everything that even looks like a fucking squid. You're on the wrong side of this, kid. And when my team gets here--you're going to die." 

There's terror in his eyes, and Tony feels a stirring of pity. It's small, a tiny thing that's wrapped up in the knowledge--it doesn't matter. 

This kid is between him and the door, between him and  _ James _ and even if he wanted, there's nothing Tony can do now to keep him alive. 

"You fucked up. Took the wrong guy." 

"Because you're Ironman?" the kid says, curious and confused and Tony smiles, a small tight thing. 

"No," he says, because this is something he understands, after two years of James loving him. "Because I'm Tony Stark. And the Winter Soldier will kill you all for daring to touch me."

~*~ 

They're HYDRA, but they're a mess. Tony watches the guard whispering into his radio, watches a few new faces scramble into the room, eyes wide and scared. 

One idiot looks  _ hopeful _ , excited, and Tony snorts, seeing her. 

"You're not going to take him," he says, almost lazily. "The Winter Soldier has been free for years now, broke your programing with almost no effort at all, and has a  _ life _ . You're insane if you think you'll be able to rewrite that and take your pet back." 

"You treat a weapon like a pet," she says, soft, eyes alight with that disturbing fervor he's used to seeing in the eyes of HYDRA. "You ruin our greatest creation. Little wonder you think it is harmless." 

Tony smiles, a baring of his teeth that's nothing close to friendly. "Lady, I never said he's harmless." 

Her gaze flickers, something close enough to fear that satisfaction curls in his gut, before she huffs and spins, stalking out. 

~*~ 

Waiting is usually the worst of it. 

The endless waiting, the torture and demands and right back to waiting. 

HYDRA doesn't bother with torture. They have Tony Stark and maybe he's in a defunct suit, but they aren't getting through it without more firepower than they've got on hand. They toss him into a room with a curly haired blonde girl, and two dead-eyed teenagers that worry him briefly, before the entire complex  _ shudders _ . 

The waiting is the worst of it, he thinks. 

But this time, he won't be waiting long. 

"What are they doing to you?" he asks, and the dark haired teen twitches toward him. 

Blondie gives him a dark stare, shifting to sit between Tony and the teens. 

"Dunno. Don't tell us a whole lot." She glances up as the sound of gunfire filters through the thick walls, and he shifts, a clink of metal and a bitten back groan drawing her gaze. "They like to operate on the twins. And there's a chair. They use words? They talk about the Asset, sometimes--they want to recreate it." 

"Him," Tony says, absently, and her gaze narrows on Tony, curious and hopeful both. 

Sweet silly child.

"Any powers I should know about?" he asks, thinking of the Maximoffs. He wonders briefly if HYDRA ever expected Wanda to grow as powerful as she did. 

"I'm strong," Blondie admits, and there's a scream. Close now. Close enough that Tony sighs and releases the catch on his suit. 

"Don't," she gasps, and the twins--dark and pale and dead-eyed and scarily reminiscent of James at his very worst--make low, worried noises. "They'll--" 

"They won't," he says, confidant, as he scrambles out of the armor. It hurts more, without the padding and metal keeping him still. He stumbles on the first step and the pale twin catches him, holds him upright with a hard hand and curious, cold eyes. 

"You should take a step back," he says, and Blondie scrambles to stand. 

"Why?" 

The gunfire cuts with a suddenness that makes Tony smile, and he nods at the door. 

"HYDRA's Asset? The one they're trying to recreate? He's here to pick me up." 

He sees Blondie's eyes go wide and the twins scurry away from him, and the door bangs open, hard enough that it dents the metal wall, and the Winter Soldier stalks into his little cell, fury in his stormy blue eyes and blood drenched. 

Tony smiles. "Hey, honey." 

His eyes are blank, the eerie emptiness that Tony first saw years and years ago and hasn't seen in long enough he had begun to forget. 

They're storm cloud gray empty and cold and still--they find Tony, and sweep over him, cataloguing every bruise, every abrasion, every hurt, and he snarls. 

"Most of it is my fault," he offers, "taking a tumble, even in the suit, isn't for the faint of heart." 

James' snarls again, and his gaze slides away from Tony, traces over the twins and Blondie and his mouth tightens. He draws Tony into his bloody embrace, presses his face into Tony's hair, and Tony laughs. It's a small, breathless sound, relief coursing through him. 

Even knowing James and the team were coming for him, even knowing James would burn the earth to find him--there is still a knee-weakening relief in being held by his soulmate. "I made friends, babe." 

Blondie makes a noise, almost a giggle, but it's edged with so much hysteria Tony can almost  _ taste _ it. 

James shudders against him, and then, sighs, long-suffering the way that Rhodey and Pepper only ever managed, before James slipped into his life. "What did we say about picking up strays?" 

"That was about Clint and puppies," Tony objects and James snorts into his hair. 

"What the actual fuck," one of the twins breathes, and oh--they can talk. Neat. 

"You ready to go home?" Steve asks from the doorway. He's cleaner than James, and there's something almost amused in his gaze. Steve, Tony learned, after James came home, is a bit of a  _ mean _ bastard, and nothing amuses him quite as much as watching Bucky destroy HYDRA. 

"What about my friends," Tony asks, and Steve eyes them briefly. 

"C'mon. We'll talk options on the jet," he instructs, and Blondie scurries to his side. "Nat's got the charges set, though, so we need to clear the area." 

James' grip on him tightens, and Tony leans into him, grateful and feeling every bit of bruising now that the adrenaline is beginning to wear off. 

"C'mon, honey," James says, "Let's go home." 

  



	6. Chapter 6

**+1 The Raft **

The cell is small and cold and pitch black. 

He isn’t restrained, and that--that amuses him. Because someone put him in a hole, but didn’t declaw him. 

It’s stupid, being here. That he was picked up at all. It’s almost insulting. 

Tony, he thinks, resigned, will laugh so damn hard. 

~*~ 

He was alone when they took him. 

He doesn't go out alone often, even now, years after HYDRA, years after slipping into Tony's life and bed and team. 

He can--he's been through enough therapy that it's not a hang up or fear. It's just that he likes his team, likes being close to them. He'd stay in the workshop with Tony constantly if Steve or Tasha didn't drag him out, and when they do, he follows them like an overgrown murderous puppy. 

Tony teases him about it, but he knows when he's close to the people he loves, that they're safe. 

But he was alone. Steve went back to the Tower after their run and James--James went to a nearby jewelry store. 

They'd never talked about marriage or even telling the world what they meant to each other. Tony was too visible and even now, HYDRA was desperate to get their hands on their Asset. 

And they knew, in a way that was deep and undeniable, so who the hell cared if the world knew? Let them look at Tony, pant after him, all they wanted. Tony belonged, heart, soul and body, to James. He didn't care what the rest of the world thought. 

Still. 

A ring. 

Tony had looked at Sam's when Steve proposed a few months back, something silently longing in his dark eyes that James couldn't quite forget. 

He went to the store alone and he found what he wanted, or close enough he was able to order something custom made. 

He'd planned on stopping for coffee before he went home, the sweet dark roast from the shop on the corner two blocks from the tower. They had flakey chocolate croissants that Tony loved. 

The black van and the woman who fell into him, the hypodermic needle plunging into his vein and the black chasing him down into nothing--all of it was so well done, so perfectly executed--

They'd been watching him. For a long time. 

In his little cold cell, the Winter Soldier waited. 

~*~ 

He doesn’t react when the lights come on, blinding bright after the darkness. He doesn’t react when a foot prods him--whoever they are, it isn’t HYDRA. 

No one from HYDRA would get close enough to touch. Not without the Chair and--he shivers, and shakes that thought, and waits. “Boss wants to see you,” one of the guards says and James rises, liquid smooth, tracking the guns that follow him, the tension that ratchets up as he stands. “Ok,” he says, patiently. 

They exchange anxious looks, but nothing more. 

He's almost offended. It wasn't so long ago that he was a ghost in the darkness, killing unwary victims at the behest of his masters. He was a goddamn good assassin and these little punks were treating him like a defanged housecat. 

He's almost offended, and he  _ is _ amused. 

Anyone who thinks the Winter Soldier is harmless deserves what happens to them. 

He's led through narrow halls and there's once, when they make a turn down a short hall, that he can hear what sounds like water against the metal, and he tilts toward it, curiously, before the braver of his guards prods him along. James flicks a look at him, curiously and the boy pales, falls back a step. 

He hides his smile as he allows himself to be led. 

Theodore Ross is waiting. 

Of course he is. 

James exhales, and steps into the room, standing at a loose parade rest, shoulders slumped, cataloging every detail of the room. Ross shifts, impatient, and slowly, James let's his attention drift to the general. 

Tony is going to be so  _ mad _ . 

"What do you want?" he asks. 

"Don't know that you're in any position to ask questions, Barnes." 

James tilts his head and glances around. "You didn't bring me here to let me go, and the room isn't equipped for information extraction. It's not a kill room--not that someone like you would ever get your hands dirty like that." He grins, sudden, savage, "That's why HYDRA made me. But there's no point in me bein' in this room right now, with you--unless you wanna talk. So. What do you want?" 

Ross is good. He doesn't even blink, doesn't show an ounce of temper. James almost likes that about him. "I want the Avengers to bend," he says, softly. "You know about breaking people. I read your file, Barnes--I know how HYDRA broke you." 

James stares back, blank faced. He doesn't like thinking about that, about those early years. When he'd still believed Steve would come for him. When he still fought back. 

Before they showed him the newspapers--the war was over, the Allied armies had moved on, gone home, forgotten all about him. Until they told him that Steve was dead. 

He hadn't broken, then. 

He'd shattered. 

"You broke for them," Ross murmurs, walking closer. "And now I'm going to use you to break them. You’re the tiny piece of diamond that will break the shatterproof glass, Sergeant. You should be proud of that." 

Barnes smiles. "You won't. You don't have a decade, like HYDRA did. You can't break me the way they did." 

"I don't," Ross agrees and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out--

James's stomach drops, rolls, and for a moment, he's afraid he's going to be sick. 

The book is small, red with a black star that is too familiar. He remembers seeing it, all those decades when he didn't know what the hell it meant, and he remembers when he realized what it did. 

When Tony found a copy, while they were raiding a deserted HYDRA base, he'd razed the damn thing to the ground, angrier than James had ever seen him before or since. 

They were supposed to be gone--all of them, burnt to ash. 

They weren't supposed to be used against him anymore. 

"Alexander Pierce was a bastard and a traitor," Ross murmurs. "But he was effective. And he left this for me, in his will. I think he thought I'd join his merry little band of Nazis, but the Captain destroyed that, even if I were so inclined. But you're here, Barnes. And I can do better than joining HYDRA--I can use you to bring the Avengers to heel." 

"They won't let you," he says, but his mouth is dry. His fingers shake and he clenches his hand into a fist to stop it. 

"Cap can't save you, Barnes. Not from this. He can't find you--and even if he does--you almost killed him once, because of orders. I can make you do that again. I  _ will _ , if they don't give me what I want. He can't save you. Not from this," Ross smiles, pleased and cocky, as he waves the book. 

James smiles, then. "Your intel is out of date," he says, his hands loosening. "Steve isn't going to save me. That's sorta always been my job in our friendship," he explains, leaning toward Ross like he's sharing a secret. 

"You--"

"Steve isn't what broke my programing, Ross. And he won't be who saves me from you. One of these days, you spies and assholes who think you can use us against each other are gonna figure this out. You can't. You won't. But you do what you gotta do. Use that, if you want." 

He pauses, and his smile is small, almost tender when he says, "But if you do. When you do. I want you to remember--he'll kill you for it." 

“You just said Steve won’t touch me,” Ross snarls and James’s smile goes wider. 

“He won’t. He’s not the one you gotta worry about.” 

~*~

They strap him down. 

It's not torture like Hydra could--had--put him through. But it's torture, and that's never a picnic. 

Torture is torture, and it makes his heart pound, fear hot and thick in his throat when they strap him to a cold metal table and pour poison into his veins. He thrashes against the bindings, and for a moment, he isn't Steve's Bucky, Tony's James, the Avenger called Winter Soldier. 

For an endless nightmare, he's  _ their's _ again, their tool, their  _ weapon _ , and he doesn't scream because screaming means pain and punishment and the Chair, but he wants to, he wants to scream and beg for the life he's built free of these walls. 

He kills one of the guards when they pull him from the table, drag the other in by his throat and choke, squeeze hard enough he can hear cartilage crunch, and he hears a voice shouting in English--why are they shouting in  _ English _ \--and then something stings his neck, and he slaps at it, an animal slapping flicking a bug away. 

Then the drug sinks in, fast, fast, and he drops like a stone, snarling Russian curses as he goes. 

~*~ 

He wakes up in his black cell and there's nothing in his blood, nothing in his head but his own memories. 

He wakes up in a cell and he can  _ remember _ them putting poison in his veins, the way it made pain sharp and hot and inescapable and the guard he killed. It's overlaid by Tony, by the sure steady knowledge of his soulmate. 

But the cell is cold and black and his arm hangs useless and painful at his side and he can feel blood, tacky on his fingers. 

Tony promised he would be safe. 

Would never hurt like HYDRA hurt him, not again. 

He licks his lips. Closes his eyes and behind them, he can see Tony. Beautiful and sleepy in their bed, manic and expressive in the workshop, laughing at the table at something Steve said. 

He can see him, head tipped down to poke gently at James's arm and the relieved gratitude in his eyes every time James found him in those long years they weren't together. 

He can see him, fierce and deadly in his armour and soft and vulnerable sprawled under James, and shouting at Ross, his eyes furious as the Secretary of Defense tried to take Wanda and James from the Avengers. 

He was beautiful strength and fragile madness and James clung to the thought of him, the dream of him, the promise he wants to be real. 

_ I won't ever let them have you again.  _

He waits.

~*~ 

When they bring him into the room, he's stumbling. His stomach aches and his fingers are shaking. He hasn't been fed since they took him, and the drugs--whatever the hell they gave him--it's aftereffects are a bitch. 

He stumbles a little more than necessary and he uses the distraction to look around. There's a table in the center of the room and a camera on a tripod focused on it. 

Proof of life, then. 

He doesn't fight them as they strap him to the table. They have more guards now--apparently killing one guard and crippling another is enough to up security and take care with the assassin they're so desperate to leash. 

He wonders, idly, if that little display pleased Ross. If he was excited by what his new weapon could do. 

The camera comes on, and there's no demand, nothing said at all--just silence. Waiting. He breathes, his eyes closed against the glare of the overhead lights, forcing his face empty and his muscles slack and every whispering fear silent. 

He focuses on Tony. 

His Tony. 

Who would never leave him here. 

He almost smiles. 

And then the pain begins. 

He never does scream. 

~*~ 

He loses track of time. He's shivering, soaked from the water they pour in his face. They stopped the electric prods when they started the waterboarding, so there's that at least. His feet though--they ripped his boots away and burnt the soles of his feet while he thrashed and bit back the screams. 

There is one particular stretch of time when they bring in a woman, a girl with a curving dangerous smile and eyes that flicker with secrets and a knife. 

He whimpered, once, when she sliced away the skin on his ribs, flaying him open and leaving the muscle quivering and exposed. 

"If you think torturing me will get the Avengers to do your dirty work, you're even more of an idiot that we thought," James slurs once, when she steps away, blood splattered and eyes bright with a hunger that he had seen in too many Handler's eyes. 

Ross shifted. "Maybe. Maybe it's time to use this, hmm?" He waves the book at James. "I've given Captain Rogers ample time to come for you. He knows the demands I have. Maybe you're right--but if that's true, I have no need of  _ you _ , Barnes. The Soldier will be much more useful." 

~*~ 

He screams when the words rip through the air. 

He screams when they rip away the life he's built. 

He screams when they rip away his  _ choice _ .

He screams and he screams and Ross never pauses, and he realizes as he hears a high whine above his droning voice and his own screams--

It doesn't rip away Tony. 

~*~ 

The door explodes inward and the sound of a repulsor fills the air, above Ross's panicked shouting and the fucking  _ words _ , and then Ironman swoops through the open door, and slams into Ross, and never slows, just slams right into the wall. He pulls back and crashes Ross into the wall again and the man goes limp, head lolling and still and Tony drops him. 

Steve steps into the room, hands and shield bloody, fury bright in his eyes, and James says, "Don't--" 

"Shut up," Steve snaps, furious and Tony is darting across the room, herding the guards toward the door and he can hear Tasha's voice, sharp and furious, and the whole building kind of  _ shakes _ . 

It's all distant, registered below the burning fear because Steve--

"Don't," James chokes out, and Steve's fingers on the restraints still. "Don't--I'm dangerous." 

Steve stares at him, like he doesn't understand. 

He doesn't. 

Tony does. 

“The book,” Tony breathes and Steve freezes. 

“How far did he get?” Steve asks, tight, and James can feel it, the weight of commands, the weight of compliance and he wants to scream. 

Tony presses Steve to one side. The faceplate flips up, and Tony stares down, eyes wild and beautiful and furious but his gauntlet is gentle, soft and reassuring

James bites back the whine in his throat while Tony stares at him. There's a promise in his eyes, a promise James's never not believed. "It doesn't matter, love," he promises. "You won't hurt me." 

"Tony--" he chokes out and Tony nods. "Please." 

"Cap will hate it," he says, cautiously and James flicks a look at his best friend. Steve is watching them with wide, scared eyes. 

"He knows you would never do something I didn't ask for," he chokes out, because that's true. Tony sighs and leans down. He kisses James, quick and gentle, a chaste promise, and then he pulls back and says, "Winter Protocol, JARVIS." 

The restraints don't bind him, so much as they immobilize him. He can hear Steve protesting, but he doesn't really focus on that. He focuses on Tony, guiding him to sit up and stand, the gentle prodding of the restraints that control his movements, and how it doesn't hurt. 

It's almost soothing, to be controlled, scratching the itch the words that he hates had created. 

"We need to get out," Widow says, cutting off Steve's angry tirade, and she flicks a look at the unconscious Ross. "Are we leaving him?" 

Something dark and cold flicks across Tony's face, and James says, "No." 

Steve and Tony both look at him, but it's Tony he's concerned with. Tony he watches when he says, "Don't kill him. Not for me. It's not worth it." 

Tony's head tips to one side and he smiles, a smile so soft it feels strange to see it here. "Darling, you are the only thing worth killing for." 

~*~ 

They don't. 

They take Ross back to the quinnjet and Tony leaves him in Steve's hands as he leads James to a corner of the quinnjet. "You don't need those," he murmurs, touching his finger to the restraints. "You gave me orders out there. Whatever Ross did--it didn't strip away your free will." 

"You stopped him," James says, leaning into Tony's shoulder. He smells of sweat and iron and blood and that oil metal coffee scent that is pure  _ Tony _ . He lips at Tony's throat, absently, as the quinnjet lifts up. "You saved me." 

Behind and below, the Raft is burning, and Tony's face is bright with vicious pleasure and satisfaction and his hands are tight and possessive on James's face. 

"We save each other. We always will." 

James closes his eyes and nestles closer and murmurs, "Can we go home now?" 

Tony nods against his hair. 

The restraints fall away as they turn toward home. 


End file.
